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Team Muirhead Claim Extra End Win Over China at Winter Olympics

Posted on 15 February 2018

Team GB’s women’s curlers demonstrated their determination and resilience after they bounced back from defeat earlier today to beat China 8-7 at an extra end. In a closely fought match, exactly as skip Eve Muirhead predicted ahead of the game, the teams switched the lead throughout until the British quartet started to control the closing ends of the game, securing twos at the seventh and ninth to give them a one shot lead going into the tenth end.

From there Bingyu Wang’s rink were held to a single which meant the Brits had hammer at the extra and in similar fashion to the GB men earlier in the day, team work prevailed and her Sochi bronze medal winning teammates kept the house sufficiently clear to let skip Eve make the draw for a well earned win.

The result means the GB men and women are both in the upper reaches of the standings with a 2-1 win ratio after the second day of the round robin tournament.

“The girls played great and we showed a lot of guts and determination. Our heads could have gone down after the USA game but we stayed positive,” said Muirhead.

“Experience helps and we are the two most experienced teams here - Betty got the bronze in Vancouver and we got it the Games after.

“If you’d said at the start of the week I’d have won two and lost one after three games then I would have taken that.

"It takes a bit of time to get used to the conditions and it's tricky out there. We’ve adapted quickly and it showed during the end result.”

Four times world champion Glenn Howard, who is now their coach, said of the team’s performance: “I was really proud of the girls, they weren’t at their best for five or six ends and it was a little scrappy. They hung in there and then played brilliantly at the end and that shows the sign of a good team. We still missed a few shots that we should have made.

"This team doesn’t get upset, they’ve got each others backs. They didn’t have a great game against the USA but they turned it around and it is a sign of things to come.”

Commenting on the lively atmosphere in the arena, due to strong home crowds supporting Korea playing Japan on an adjacent rink this evening, Eve added: "I love the atmosphere out there, sometimes you can’t hear yourselves think. I can’t wait to play Korea.

“The Korean team is really strong and we’ve not beaten them yet.”

Team Muirhead have no games tomorrow, but Team GB men skipped by Kyle Smith taken on Sweden’s Team Edin who won the European Championships in St Gallen last Novermber.